


tuesday, four o'clock

by chaosy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M, OCs galore, Therapy, Threats of Violence, everyone gets therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27420529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosy/pseuds/chaosy
Summary: The story of Diane, SHIELD's mental health program manager, and how she became the therapist for the Avengers.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45





	tuesday, four o'clock

**Author's Note:**

> This story requires a few caveats before reading. Namely, that I'm not a therapist, and have very little knowledge of how pastoral care or social services work in the US. Being fanfiction, I'm playing fast and loose with reality.  
> Typical therapy-talk warnings. This fic is 90% dialogue. Characters don't discuss traumatic events in detail but there's discussion of the affect of trauma including but not limited to triggers and some canon-typical violence, as well as threats towards a child (no violence there). 
> 
> A warm thank you to everyone who's left kind or constructive comments on my work.
> 
> Set in that marvellous vague world where we ignore everything that happened after AoU. Pairing is Steve/Bucky from an outsider's POV but this is more of a general character study.

Normally Diane doesn’t take appointments later than five, but the email said it was urgent. Miriam doesn’t need to be put to bed, is over at Lila’s for a sleepover, but still. Principle of the thing. When she started her hours had been from eight til eight and it had been _exhausting_. 

The comfort and security of her own practice is gratifying. The office is hers, the bookcase and the computer and the carefully selected couch and chair. The radio, which she turns up to hear the latest on the SHIELD leak. 

The news had been devastating, terrifying. Diane thinks of the blurry, haunting footage of the masked man with the silver arm and reflexively texts Lila’s mom - _How are the girls?_

The light comes on by her door just a few minutes later, as her phone beeps - _Having a blast. Playing soccer. Go relax! x_

Diane smiles at it and opens the door. Sam Wilson is early by twenty minutes.

“Hello Sam,” she says, pleasantly. “You’re early, but come on in. Have a seat.”

“Thanks,” Sam says. His face is taut and stressed. “Sorry, I can wait if you’d prefer.”

“Not at all. My last guy cancelled. You want a coffee?”

Sam doesn’t respond. When she shuts the door and turns to look at him, his eyes are fixed on the radio. They’re replaying the Black Widow statement. Without further prompting he sits down heavily onto the couch. Diane starts putting some water in the pot anyway, quietly turning the radio off.

Once they’re settled, and Sam has accepted the coffee without barely registering, Diane gives him a moment. She doesn’t always like to ask the first question - gives the patients a chance to start, on their own terms, talk about whatever they want. What’s pressing usually surfaces soon enough. 

There’s thirty seconds of silence while Sam stares into his coffee and then back to her. She opens her mouth to speak at the same time that he finally breaks the quiet.

“Man,” he says. “Some _shit_ happened last weekend.”

-

She met Sam about five years ago, two years before she started her own practice. He’d been through three different trauma therapists and was surly and rude. He was lost, grieving, unable to adjust to civilian life. And _stubborn_. Diane has an eclectic variety of patients, but Sam Wilson is uniquely stubborn. 

He’s come a long way. She remembers the morning he called her and before she could gently remind him that this number was for emergencies only, he was yelling down the phone about passing his counselling certification. And suddenly the rules about her number didn’t matter anymore - she broke composure and went _oh Sam! That’s wonderful!_

She doesn’t have favourite patients but Sam’s sessions always feel hopeful and uplifting. He’s utterly certain in his own morality, has become so much steadier as the years have gone by. When she started her private practice he was the first to sign up. Sometimes he’ll spend the hour talking heavily about the weight of others’ problems at the VA, his own self doubt regarding how he can help them. Sometimes he’ll talk amiably about a date he has with a girl from the library. 

Recently most of their sessions have been about Captain America. 

Diane, privately, doesn’t approve of Captain America. She’s trying to help Sam understand his agency here - he was immediately willing to turn his life upside down for a man he barely knows, and now their monthly sessions are a catchup of whatever horrible details Sam’s been cleared to tell her from missions that are apparently so classified that they officially don’t exist.

“He’s just - the way the guy talks, Diane,” Sam is saying, talking with his hands. “Thank god he’s one of the good guys because he could convince you to jump off a cliff. Even my old CO couldn’t be that inspiring. I just felt - compelled, even though he was straight with me about how dangerous it would be. I just had to follow him.”

Diane resists the urge to quirk a skeptical eyebrow. Instead she nods. “You say _compelled_ . You _had to_. You make it sound like you didn’t have a choice.”

“I had a choice,” Sam says, defensively, too quickly. She looks at him. “I don’t know. It felt so easy. To get back in.”

“Is that how you feel now? Like you’re back serving again?”

“No,” Sam says, quickly again, and then re-answers. He’s been doing a lot of that lately. “It doesn’t feel like serving. There’s no structure or orders to follow. Maybe it feels like having a copilot again. Having a partner, standing side by side, fighting the bad guys.”

Diane hums. “You seem very defensive of Captain America,” she says.

“Steve,” Sam corrects her and is self aware enough to catch himself, letting slip a loose laugh. “Yeah, guess I am. He’s something else, Diane. When we’re working together I feel like I’m a part of something bigger. He said he was going to go look for - uh, go on these missions - and it was a no brainer.”

As always, he thanks her at the end, and she smiles and tells him to have a good month. These days it feels a little trite, knowing that Sam has a seven AM flight to Tbilisi in the morning to break into a Hydra cell. 

“He’s one of a kind, Diane. I’m telling you. You gotta meet him.”

Diane has never wanted anything less. “Have a safe flight, Sam,” she replies.

-

The Winter Soldier is still at large. There’s a catastrophic event in Sokovia. Diane has the radio on as she makes breakfast, Miriam fiddling with the dial as she eats her apple slices. 

“ _Newly announced additions to the remarkable Avengers include Wanda Maximoff, from Sokovia, and Sam Wilson, a veteran from Harlem under the codename Falcon -”_

“Why is he a bird?” Miriam asks, seemingly trying to fit all of the fruit in her mouth at once.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, honey,” Diane says reflexively, distracted. “That’s his code name. His superhero name. Like how Iron Man is Tony Stark.”

Miriam nods enthusiastically. “Falcon is a cooler name than Iron Man,” she says, decisively. Diane smiles, debates telling Sam that during their session next week. 

Before she can respond, Miriam says, “My superhero name would be Sink.”

In a twenty-year career of psychotherapy, Diane is still consistently delighted by the weirdness of small children. “Why’s that?” she says encouragingly. 

“I could drip water on my enemies. I’ll drip it onto their nose and mouth and eyes and torture them for the _truth_ ,” Miriam says with shining eyes. “Bobby told me about it at school.”

This is how Diane learns that seven year-olds discuss waterboarding in the playground, and that her faucet is leaking.

-

Sam turns up late. Diane has back to back appointments so they have to cut this session a little short, but he’s asked if he can see her next week as well. When he called her about it last week, her heart sank. It felt like such a triumph when Sam’s sessions went from once a week, to once a fortnight, to once a month. He’s come unbelievably far and all this _avenging_ is dragging him back.

“It’s been a crazy week,” Sam says as he sits down. He says a lot of that recently.

Diane nods. “How’s the mindfulness been going?”

Sam’s expression flickers. “Not great. But I’ve started listening to music before missions and training. It calms me down, puts me in the right headspace. I know it doesn’t exactly _empty my mind_ but it stops me from overthinking and stressing out.”

“Do you find yourself getting stressed easily?” Diane asks.

Sam snorts. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “I work with _Black Widow_.”

Their session isn’t as productive as usual; Sam is clearly tired, fidgets and is clearly resisting the urge to break Diane’s _no phones_ policy. But Sam is, and has been seemingly ever since he met Captain America, euphorically happy. He looks like his very bones are weighing him down with exhaustion, but his eyes are so bright. He practically brims with excitement talking about Colonel Rhodes. Diane thinks of the veteran who came to her, years ago, his shoulders tight with grief, who now speaks glowingly about guys whose codenames are things like _War Machine_ and _Captain America_. She has some re-evaluating to do.

“Listen,” Sam says, his tone very deliberate, five minutes before the end of their session. “The appointment I made next week - it’s not for me.”

“Right,” Diane says, painfully aware of what Sam is about to say next.

“I want you to meet Steve.”

 _Fucking wonderful_ , Diane thinks, unprofessionally. “Is Steve aware that you’ve made the appointment?”

Sam presses his lips together sheepishly. “Uh. Kinda.” Diane raises an eyebrow at him. “No,” he admits. “He’s from a different time. They still called it _shell shock_ when he served. I’m warming him up to it.”

There’s a pause. “I’ll see him,” Diane says, finally. 

“Thank you,” Sam breathes, and stands up, the last thing off his chest now. “I just -” He pauses and there’s a deep sadness in his eyes. As complex as the situation is, Diane has always admired Sam greatly. She doesn’t know of many people she’d describe as genuinely _good_. “I just think - he really needs someone to talk to.”

Diane doesn’t doubt that. She stands and hands Sam his jacket, sees him to the door. As she’s about to bid him goodbye, she says, suddenly, “I’m fostering a little girl.”

Sam looks surprised. She doesn’t volunteer information about herself to her patients. “Yeah?” he says.

“Yeah. She’s seven. She, uh - she says that Falcon is cooler than Iron Man.”

A slow, practically luminous grin spreads across Sam’s face. “Smart kid,” he says.

-

She notices Captain America - _Steve_ \- in her waiting area immediately. What strikes her first is just how shockingly _big_ he is. Diane is slim and short, at 5’3. Steve stands a full foot taller than her and probably about twice the width well.

The second thing that strikes her is how unremarkable he looks. In press photos he has his face turned to some far off light, his blonde hair like bright gold, his face always fixed into some careful expression of determined patriotism. 

In person Steve’s hair is darker, brownish under a cap, his eyes cloudy and troubled. He must be in his late twenties but his expression makes him look a hundred years old. Which, Diane supposes, he nearly is.

She fixes him a cup of coffee and they sit opposite each other for a long time. Steve is looking her over carefully, cataloging her office. Diane knows he’s checking the exits and looking for vantage points. 

“Sam made this appointment for you,” she starts, because she has a feeling that if she doesn’t they’ll just sit in silence for the entire hour.

“He did,” Steve says. He says nothing else.

“Have you had any sort of therapy or counselling service before?” she asks.

“Not really,” Steve says. 

Silence falls again.

Here’s the thing about Diane; she’s an excellent trauma therapist and she loves a challenge.

“Do you think you would’ve sought out therapy of your own volition?” she asks him.

Steve grimaces. “No, ma’am.”

Diane gives him her best, warmest smile. “My name is Diane. Unless you’d rather we stick to formalities and I call you Captain Rogers?”

“There is literally nothing I’d like less,” Steve says, immediately. There’s a pause and he gives her a smile - it’s tiny and nervous and lasts for about half a second, but it’s there.

Diane hums, encouraging. “Alright, Steve,” she says. “Let’s talk about some things you _do_ like.”

-

One hour later, Steve stands with his jacket at the door, looking a little bit like he’s been thrown off a cliff and survived. “I’ll see you next week?” he says, tentatively.

Diane hands him his cap, which he discarded about half an hour in. “Wednesday, two o’clock. Have a good weekend,” she says, and sees him out.

The office practically rings with released tension as the door shuts and she’s alone again. Jennifer, a paramedic from Seattle, is in the waiting room, ready for her three fifteen appointment. Diane gives herself two minutes.

She drains the rest of her coffee, straightens her sweater. Breathes in and out. Counts different objects in the room, focuses on the feel of her shoes on the floor. 

She opens the door and motions Jennifer inside. They sit opposite each other. 

She takes another breath. “Cup of coffee?” she asks.

-

Sessions with Steve are a patchwork. He has to shuffle her around his perplexing schedule and it’s only after their third session that he admits to her that he doesn’t have a permanent place of residence yet. 

“I mostly just stay at the compound, in hotels, and if we’re on a mission I sleep wherever they put me. I’ve stayed at Stark’s building a lot. Having a home just seems - risky, after DC,” he admits. Steve always has to _admit_ his feelings - never just says them out loud. They’re working on it.

Diane recalls Sam explaining that the director of SHIELD was assassinated through the wall of Steve’s apartment. “I’ll bet,” she says.

Sometimes things go well. At the end of their sixth session, Steve turns to her and smiles at her genuinely. “Thank you for today, Diane,” he says warmly. He sounds like he’s speaking truly from the heart.

Okay, alright. Diane gets it. “Thank you, Steve,” she says. “Have a good week.”

-

During their ninth session, which comes squeezed into a Monday morning, Steve drops heavily onto the couch. His hair is a mess and he clearly hasn’t slept.

“When the SHIELD leak happened, do you remember the footage of - there was a man in a mask, with a metal arm? There wasn’t a lot of it but I know it got a lot of hits on Youtube.”

Diane nods. “I read about it. They called him the Winter Soldier.”

Steve shakes his head and closes his eyes. There’s a long silence and the breath rattles out of him slowly. “His name,” he says, his voice tremulous. “Is James Buchanan Barnes. He’s my best friend,” he says.

There’s another beat of quiet and Steve starts to cry.

-

Everything about Barnes - _Bucky_ , as Steve softly insists on calling him - comes out at once. His death, his apparent resurrection, everything Steve has found out about what Hydra have done to him. He spends the hour, between spills of tears, telling Diane about the stacks of files, coded and in Russian, detailing each experiment. Each episode of torture and brainwashing. _The chair_. 

Every Winter Soldier sighting has been a dead end so far. “What do you want to do when you find him?” Diane asks. She doesn’t say _if_.

Steve wipes his eyes again. “I don’t know,” he says. “I just want to bring him home.”

By the end of the session Diane finds herself fighting back tears as she sees Steve out. “Have a good week,” she says, the edges of her voice strained.

If Steve notices, he doesn’t say anything. He mumbles an affirmative and heads out.

-

Steve must have told Sam that he spoke about Bucky with Diane, because in their next sessions he’s a lot more forthcoming about the missions.

“I have a hard time with this part,” Sam says after a heavy pause. He’s speaking of the times where they uncover more details about the Winter Soldier program.

“How do you feel towards him now? Barnes, I mean,” Diane says. “Now that you’ve found out about what he’s been through?”

Sam drinks steadily from his cup of tea like he wishes it were something stronger. “God, it’s hard. Because like, he’s Steve’s best friend, you know? And the guy has been through the worst - the _worst_ kind of torture. They fed him through a _bag_. It’s a fucking miracle that he even survived the first round of experiments on his arm. But - when I met him -”

He trails off. Diane finishes for him gently. “It was a violent encounter. It’s alright to feel wary about encountering him again. If you feel distrustful or even angry. Those are all perfectly normal things to feel towards someone you thought was hostile.”

Sam nods. They sit in quiet for a moment; Diane watches him work out his own thoughts. “I don’t think I’m angry at him. I’ve been looking for him for a long time. I sure as hell don’t trust him but that’s more to do with the fact that I’ve seen what he can do,” he explains. 

“How often do you think about him in your own time? Outside of your missions with Steve,” Diane clarifies. Although she’s learned that they’re not really _missions_. More like Sam and Steve covertly checking out a load of dangerous weapons from the Avengers compound and sneaking across borders.

“All the time,” Sam says heavily. “Feels like the only thing that drowns it out is my little pre-mission playlist. And even then, I gotta change it up each time because I’ll start associating the Winter Soldier with Sam Cooke.” Diane feels a great wave of pain in her chest. Sam has found his purpose, his drive after the army and the catastrophic loss of Riley, but at what cost?

“He’s like an emotionally complex bogeyman,” Sam is saying. “I feel really fucking bad for him and I want to find him, for his sake and Steve’s. But - I just -”

Another long stretch of quiet. His words fade away again like a shout in a hurricane. “Sam?” Diane says, softly.

“I’m scared of him,” Sam finally breathes out. His words aren’t much louder than a murmur.

Diane nods. She lets the admission sit with them for a moment, Sam looking like it’s news to him as well. 

“Tell me,” she says. “What have you been listening to lately?”

-

About six months into her sessions with Steve, she gets a call. A new patient. The woman on the phone sounds so excessively unconcerned that it’s a little unnerving.

“How does Tuesday at one sound?” she asks. The phone is wedged between her ear and her shoulder as she braids Miriam’s hair. 

“Perfect,” the woman says, in a voice that implies that it is anything but. “Thank you, Doctor Yang.”

“Not at all,” she says, slightly perturbed. Most people sound nervous when they call her for an appointment. Therapists bring out the hesitancy in people. The woman on the other end of the phone sounds so breezily unbothered that she might as well be placing a takeout order. “Can I take your name?”

“Friday,” she says. 

“I’m sorry?”

“Friday,” she says again, and there’s a fleck of annoyance in her voice. 

Diane feels like there’s going to be a lot to unpack during their first session. Miriam’s braid is pathetically wonky. 

“Alright, Friday,” she says, as smooth and welcoming as she can sound on a weekend call. “I’ll see you next Tuesday, one o’clock. I’ll send you a follow up email confirming everything,” she says.

“Very good,” Friday says, and the phone clicks off.

Miriam tips her head up the moment Diane puts down the phone. “Did the lady on the phone say goodbye?”

Diane gives her a grin and shakes her head. “No, honey. Isn’t that rude?”

“ _So_ rude,” Miriam says. She lifts her hand up to feel her braid. 

“Sorry,” Diane says sheepishly, sliding a sparkly green clip in to hold it in place. “I messed up a little there, didn’t I?”

Miriam shakes her head vehemently. “I _love_ it. Don’t touch it Diane!” she says, dead serious. 

Diane laughs, holds up her hands innocently. “Whatever you say,” she promises. 

They haven’t worked up to _mom_ yet. She watches Miriam beam at herself in the mirror and thinks - hopes - _soon_.

-

Her Friday-on-Tuesday appointment lands just after her lunch break. She’s late. Bad combination of a long line at the coffee shop and getting drawn into a hideously awkward encounter with a guy on the corner flyering for a new special called a _meat pyramid_. Diane thinks of her parents, who send her anxious emails from Busan warning her off American fast food. Bad for the heart, her mother says. She gets a tasteless sandwich to go.

She’s only two minutes late, but still. Principle of the thing. The waiting room is empty and Diane breathes a sigh of relief - Friday hasn’t shown up yet.

She opens the door to her office and Tony Stark is sat on her couch.

“Um,” Diane says, staring at him.

“Doctor Yang!” Stark says, brightly. He stands up to meet her, pumps her hand in a wildly energetic handshake. “You come highly recommended.”

Diane needs another moment of staring before she can form words. “Right. Mr. Stark, I’m sorry, I have another appointment right now -”

“Oh, Friday’s my assistant,” he says breezily. “Look. Hey, Friday?”

A voice that emanates seemingly from Stark’s pocket goes, “Yes, Mr. Stark?” It’s the same flat-voiced woman from the phone. Diane blinks. She had a conversation on the phone with a robot.

“She could have mentioned,” she says. 

“Oh, you know, the need for a little anonymity, what with my supremely recogniseable name. Can I sit? I’m going to sit,” he says. He lies down on the couch and folds his hands over his chest. “I think everything sort of went to shit when I was around five. I was working on my first car - kids’ stuff, you know - and my dad walks into the garage, and he says -”

“Mr. Stark,” Diane cuts him off. She puts her bag down. He looks at her like a man who isn’t used to being interrupted. There’s too long a stretch of quiet where they both stare at each other. Diane compartmentalises, _hard_ , and takes a seat opposite him. “No shoes on my couch,” she says.

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Mr. Stark says. “Sorry, Doc. Been a while since I’ve had a therapist, unless you count thermodynamics-and-bitching with Bruce, I mean, _I_ totally do -”

“You can call me Diane,” she says. Normally, interrupting patients is against her rules. She has a feeling she might have to break this particular one with Stark. 

“Right, Diane, yeah. Cool. You can call me Tony, I already get _Mister Stark_ -ed way too much. I’m about to spill my guts to you, you can call me Tony.”

Diane nods. Folds her hands in her lap. “You can talk about whatever you’d like, Tony. Can I fix you a coffee?”

Tony waves his hand. “No, no offense, but your bean choice is out-of-this-world terrible. I mean, _Folgers light roast_ ? God, no wonder your patients keep coming back for _more_ therapy,” he says.

Diane arches an eyebrow at him but luckily he doesn’t notice, shifts in her seat. “I can get a different variety if that’s what you’d like,” she offers, diplomatically, and Tony waves his hand again, staring at the ceiling comfortably.

“Nah, it’s fine, to be fair, you probably know coffee, don’t you? Your parents run a coffee shop, serve a lot of college students, right? Although god knows what they’d say if they knew their daughter had freakin’ _Folgers light roast_ -”

“Excuse me?” Diane says, going quite still.

“Oh, I just did a quick background check, gotta make sure you’re not, like, a spy, Steve and Sam are real mugs at the whole _international secrecy_ thing, and if you were a spy that’d be absolutely not great.”

“I think that’s inappropriate -” Diane says. She doesn’t even have a chance to elaborate before Tony interrupts, but that’s perhaps for the best, because she doesn’t even know where to start.

“No, that’s all cool, you’re a genuinely unbelievably qualified therapist. Oxford, then _Princeton_ , scholarships for Princeton are notoriously a _bitch_ to get, trust me, I’ve got a whole sponsorship thing going on with them right now, your admissions essay was _top notch_ -”

Diane’s admissions essay for grad school is not public record, as far as she’s aware. “Tony,” she says. Tony seems to have stopped listening altogether. 

“I mean really, I’ve had like, a hundred therapists, you might possibly be _the most qualified_ , I’m amazed they gave you such a hard time with the fostering situation, if I worked for CPS you’d be top of my list -”

“That’s not up for discussion,” Diane says with increasing urgency. She’s never uttered such a sentence in her practice before. Tony steam-rollers ahead.

“What, you honestly think I wouldn’t look into you? Or SHIELD, for that matter, since Steve and Sam are spilling incredibly sensitive information to you on the regular?” he says, seemingly noticing her alarm for the first time.

“I keep a strict confidentiality with my patients,” Diane says, stricken.

“I’m sure you do, but doctor-patient confidentiality kind of flies out the window when you’re dealing with someone like the Winter Soldier and a secret, Pentagon-deep, century-old Nazi society. Someone in a SHIELD office right now is probably looking into your kid, Miriam, right? Make sure she’s not a Russian spy, god knows I’m sick of those,” Tony says, rambling again. “Then again, when I looked you up all I could find was that she was literally the _cutest_ child ever, god, it’s almost offensive. Can’t believe her parents -”

“That’s enough,” Diane says, very sharply. She stands up. “Get out.”

For the first time since she walked in, there is total silence.

“Excuse me?” Tony says. Now it’s his turn to look bemused.

“Get out of my office,” Diane says. “Don’t come back. Don’t say a word about my daughter.”

Tony opens his mouth to say what so many people have said to Diane, over and over. _She’s not_ -

“Get out or I’ll call the police,” she says. She’s aware that it’s not much of a threat to make against a billionaire who develops weapons, but Tony gets to his feet, mutters an apology, and leaves.

The silence when he shuts the door is crushing. Diane presses a hand to her forehead and shuts her eyes. She moves over to the counter, puts the kettle on. Folgers coffee. Tony was right, her parents would hate it. The two of them fell in love over their prodigal understanding of coffee and then had a daughter who couldn’t tell the difference between _arabica_ and _robusta_. Diane would do her homework in the coffee shop and her mother would scruff her fingers affectionately through her hair and put a cup of warm milk next to her.

They’ve spoken to Miriam over Skype a few times. Her father tried to teach her how to call him grandpa, patiently saying _hahl-bee_ and laughing when Miriam called him a short rib by mistake.

What Tony said shouldn’t have shocked her, she reasons, as she sits in her empty office. It’s a billion dollar intelligence agency. With the SHIELD leak long ago, she knows as well as anyone that privacy is a myth.

But her privacy is something she manages to keep from her patients. She volunteers little information about herself, not wanting to colour their image of her as a neutral party. Her qualifications sit proudly on the wall by her desk but other than that the room is carefully impersonal. She has a photo of Miriam in her wallet. 

Tony doesn’t call back. The next few times the phone rings, she’ll hesitate before picking it up, somehow afraid that she’ll hear Friday’s disaffected voice.

She sits and stares at the wall, counting her breathing, for so long that she loses track of time. The light comes on by the door. Tomasz, a retired bodyguard, is here for his two-thirty. 

Her expression is schooled when she opens the door. There’s a small dent in the pillow on the couch where Tony Stark rested his head. 

“Come on in,” she says warmly. “Can I fix you a coffee?”

-

She doesn’t receive any further visits from Tony Stark, nor any attempted calls from Friday. Steve must’ve heard about it from Tony because in his next session he’s brimming with apologies until Diane gently reminds him about confidentiality laws, after which he apologises more. Sam does nearly the exact same thing.

In the wake of Tony Stark’s disastrous visit, she receives two new patients.

The first is Bruce Banner. He’s possibly the most unassuming person Diane has ever met. He’s short, constantly fidgeting with his glasses. In his first session he speaks with the level, rationalising voice of someone who’s had therapy before, but with the heaviness that comes from when it hasn’t worked. After their first session, his eyes are hopeful and he gives her a smile before he leaves. Triumphant, she gets Miriam a cookie on the way home.

The second is Natasha Romanov. 

She’s alarmingly beautiful. She shows up in all black with a sleek wool coat on now that the weather is turning colder. 

“Have a seat,” Diane says, idly, as she makes her a cup of tea (no coffee, she’d said). 

“No thank you. I’d rather stand,” Natasha says.

There’s a pressed silence but Diane refuses to let it turn awkward.

“Whatever you’re comfortable with,” Diane says smoothly, passing her her mug. “I’m going to sit, if that’s alright.”

“Sure,” Natasha says. She makes one syllable sound like a challenge. 

There’s another patch of quiet. Diane doesn’t fill it this time. She watches Natasha calmly, expectantly. If this is a challenge, Diane isn’t in the habit of conceding. 

“Wanted to see the reason half my colleagues are flying to DC on the regular,” Natasha says.

Diane smiles at her. “And what do you think?”

“I think it’s fascinating that of all the top-quality therapists they could’ve appointed through SHIELD, they choose a private doctor three hundred miles away from where almost everybody lives.”

Diane is very familiar with people doubting - _is she really that good?_ “Well, here you are,” she says.

Natasha laughs. She takes off her coat and drapes it over the chair. “Here I am,” she says. She’s still standing. “They probably wanted to get away from New York. To be honest, I can’t blame them.”

“Is that what you want out of these sessions?” Diane asks her.

It’s a question that’s hardly probing but enough to give Natasha apparent pause. Diane wonders how many therapists dared ask her difficult questions when faced with that burning stare.

“Maybe. To get away from work is to venture into the unknown,” Natasha says, cryptically.

Diane gives her another smile. It feels like cracking her knuckles before a fight. “That’s what I’m here for,” she says.

-

In their next session, Natasha sits down and pulls a box of mint tea from her bag.

-

Diane’s schedule is getting full. When one Clint Barton calls her and asks if she has any slots, she has to apologetically fit him into a rushed evening session three weeks later. Two weeks after that, three of her patients all get offers for heavily discounted therapy from some of the top trauma specialists in the country. She tries not to read too much into this.

Clint is late. He’s also not alone. He’s accompanied by a rather large, slobbery golden retriever known as _Lucky_. He’s a sweet dog with only one eye and immediately leaps up to greet her when she opens the door.

“Damn dog,” Clint says, pulling him back down. “Sorry. Couldn’t find a sitter. He’s well-behaved, sorry, he’ll be good, Lucky, _sit_ ,” he says. The dog whuffs at him and continues trying to investigate Diane’s shoes.

“I’m afraid I can’t allow pets in the office, Clint,” Diane says as she lets them in. “Some of my patients could have allergies and I do my best to keep a clean space.”

Clint nods as he tries to wrangle Lucky into sitting beside the couch. Lucky refuses adamantly and leaps up onto his lap, flopping there, wagging his tail in Clint’s face.

Clint sighs.

“For today is fine,” Diane carries on, shutting the door behind her. “You want a coffee or a hot drink?”

Clint looks up at her like she’s announced an impending party. “ _Coffee_. Coffee would be awesome, thanks,” he says. When Diane hands him a mug he downs the whole thing almost in one.

“This is awesome,” he says, peering into the cup, one hand keeping Lucky from sampling the coffee as well. “What brand is this?”

“Folgers. Light roast,” Diane says.

“ _Nice_ ,” Clint says appreciatively and finishes it. 

Diane smiles at him. She thinks they're going to get along great.

-

Miriam has a snow day at school. God _dammit_ , is all Diane thinks. There are no sitters who can take her for a few hours because of the roads and today is a _busy_ day. Steve has been away in Serbia for a month and is having his first appointment in close to six weeks, the longest they’ve gone without speaking, and he sounded so tired on the phone. Diane doesn’t have much choice.

“Today,” she says to her as she helps her with her seat buckle. “Is going to be a _very boring day_.”

Miriam rolls her entire head on the seat. “ _Di-yaaane_ ,” she says, despairingly. “We _never_ get snow days!”

“I know, sweetheart,” Diane says, adjusting the mirror. “We can throw snowballs on lunch break, how about that? There are lots of books and some toys for you to play with in the waiting room. And if you sit _real quiet_ and behave _real well_ then we can go out for dinner tonight.”

Miriam seems mildly placated. “And we can be fancy ladies?” she says, in a voice that’s trying very hard to be grumpy. Diane melts a little bit. She also has no idea what _fancy ladies_ means.

“The fanciest,” she promises. Miriam gives her a giant grin, her tooth wobbling when she sticks out her tongue. “Is that your fancy face?” Diane teases her and she laughs loud, claps her hands.

If Diane’s optimism is a little forceful, that’s nobody’s business but hers.

-

Steve’s hair is still damp when he shows up for his ten o’clock and he has a few bruises that are slowly fading through the course of their session. He looks quite literally charred. Diane asks him how he’s feeling and he just gestures vaguely at himself.

He’s brought his shield for the first time. It sits in a black circular bag so it looks like a cymbal. Steve kicks it unceremoniously under his chair and looks sheepish when Diane glances at it.

“It’s - everyone treats it like it’s made of glass. It’s really tough. Been through a lot. Guess I’m just used to it,” he says. “I’ve only just come from work otherwise I would’ve left it in the compound.”

“Does it feel like you’re carrying around something valuable? The shield is one of a kind,” Diane says, not quite able to hide her curiosity this time.

Steve shrugs. “Nah. Took a hell of a hit in Serbia. Here,” he says, and before Diane can interject, he unzips the bag. The shield is much bigger than she thought it would be but when Steve insistently presses it into her hands, it can’t weigh much more than twenty pounds. 

It has a hard black mark just to the left of the star. There are several scuffs and scratches on the paint that Steve impassively insists will come out with some buffing. 

“This mark,” he says, touching over the largest one almost lovingly. “It’s - it’s from Bucky,” he says. His voice has gone quieter like it always does when talking about him.

Diane nods and gently sets the shield back into Steve’s hands. “You’ve found him?” she asks.

“In a way,” Steve says. “This is our first sighting of him in months, and the first time I’ve gotten close enough to - to actually touch him. He wasn’t angry at first, just confused, but I - I think I spooked him,” he says with his eyes growing heavy. 

“He’s deeply traumatised, Steve,” Diane tells him. They’ve been speaking long enough to know where Steve’s mind is right now. “Probably the most unique trauma case I’ve ever heard of. He’s going to react in ways you can’t predict even if you know him best,” she says. 

Steve exhales, pushing a hand through his hair. His fingers brush over the mark again before he sets the shield away. “I just couldn’t think. He was backing away from me and I grabbed him. He threw a punch with his - his arm. It’s made from the same material as the shield. Guess they react weird,” he says. He laughs and his voice is wet. Diane subtly pushes the tissues towards him and he gives her a sad smile.

“It’s like a sick joke,” he says after a pause.

“How do you mean, Steve?” she asks him, her voice kind.

Steve looks utterly crushed. It’s astonishing how fast he can go from neutral to broken when talking about Bucky. Their sessions take a lot out of him. “They changed me. I’m sure you’ve read - I was so sick when I was a kid, couldn’t get up a flight of stairs, couldn’t breathe right. They took all those problems away, made me a soldier and gave me a shield. Hydra made Bucky a soldier and gave him his arm. But -” his voice is shaking now, but it’s anger instead of heartbreak. “There was nothing _wrong_ with him. He was so _good_ and they _mutilated_ him, mind and body.”

“Remember to breathe, okay?” Diane says to him softly. “It’s wrong. A terrible thing happened to your friend, your lives were both changed beyond your control. You can empathise with him in a way that no one else on the planet can,” she says. “You’re in control of yourself now. Nobody else.”

Steve nods. His first exhale is rough but they’re making progress with the mindfulness. It takes him a while to calm and he apologises again, which Diane shakes off easily. “This is a place where what’s on the inside can come out, Steve,” she says. “Expressing those feelings helps you understand them. And I’m here to help you do that as well,” she assures him.

Steve nods again quietly. He sets his half-drunk mug on the table. “I’m in love with him, you know,” he says. 

Diane, to her credit, doesn’t even blink. She’d suspected it for a while but it’s still a hell of a revelation. Sometimes the gravity of this hits her. Steve Rogers is one of the most famous people in the world.

“For how long?” she asks.

Steve sinks into the couch and folds his hands in his lap. “God, forever,” he says to the ceiling as if he’s addressing God himself. “Before I even knew how to articulate it. He died and it hit me that I’d spend the rest of my life without him, so I crashed a plane into the Arctic.”

“I see,” Diane says. She has a lot of notes to write after Steve leaves. “And when you woke up? You’ve stayed alive in this century for a few years,” she prompts.

Steve nods. “Avenging is - good. Gives me something to do, I get to help people. The team are my friends. I sketch, I help Sam at the VA. It’s - sort of a life. Sort of. Ever since I found out Bucky was alive, I’ve felt like I’ve got a purpose again.”

-

They round off their session with some ways Steve can keep himself calm before missions and ways of approaching Bucky that are less physical. Diane suggested some letters. By the time she sees him out he looks exhausted and it’s only been an hour.

Outside, Miriam is reading her dinosaur book. She looks up at Steve and her eyes go very wide.

Diane opens her mouth. She has no idea what to say. Steve also looks suitably frozen.

“You’re _so_ tall,” Miriam says. Then her eyes narrow and she looks up at him suspiciously. “ _Too tall_.”

The tension breaks. Steve blinks and laughs, awkwardly. 

“Guess I am,” he says, looking down at himself as if he’s just noticed. “You know, not too long ago, I used to be almost the same height as your mom here. Once in my life I was even smaller than you.”

Miriam’s eyes grow impossibly wider. “But how did you _grow_?” she asks.

Steve shoots her a grin. “I ate _all_ my vegetables,” he says. He pulls his hat on, thanks Diane and waves at Miriam before he heads into the cold outside.

That night, being _fancy ladies_ apparently means that they go to any restaurant that has white table cloths. Miriam orders a plate of vegetables and eats them with great determination. Diane watches her with a smile and thinks about how when Steve referred to her as her _mom_ , Miriam didn’t correct him.

-

Tony Stark is back next week.

He has a late appointment which Diane doesn’t normally do, but he was so apologetic over the phone and said it was the only time he could get. He also paid double.

But still. Principle of the thing. 

As a result, Miriam is back in the waiting room, playing with a toy rocket that Diane’s parents sent her for Christmas. Tony sits and watches her as Diane finishes up with Imani, a judge from Portland whose expression shifts to one of astonishment when she recognises him, one step out the door. Tony gives her a beatific smile and waves.

“I feel like we got off on the wrong foot,” Tony says once they’re ensconced in the office. Snow is falling outside, flat flakes sticking to the windows.

Diane purposefully keeps the frostiness out of her voice. “It’s in the past now. I reacted poorly. I apologise,” she says. 

Tony shakes his head. He’s considerably more subdued than last time they met. “No, it was my fault. I shouldn’t have dug so deep, let alone throw it in front of you like some kind of threat. I’ve got a lot of paranoia issues,” he says.

Well then, Diane thinks. Right into it. It’s almost relieving after having to chip away at the exteriors Natasha and the rest of the Avengers to get anywhere concrete.

“Do you think that stems from your Avenging?” Diane asks.

“You know, you’d think so, but I actually think it’s from all the coke. I’m gonna lie down, is it cool if I lie down?” Tony says.

Diane opens her mouth but he cuts her off. “No shoes. Don’t worry, I remember,” he says.

She smiles at him. “Whatever you’re comfortable with, Tony,” she says. And then, slyly, she asks, “Coffee?”

-

Tony’s sessions are a little bit all over the place. Sometimes he comes up with totally mature insights on his own. He says, in a tight morning session before a date with Pepper; “I think a lot of my tinkering really just comes from a desire for a very extravagant catharsis - when I don’t get it, my pursuits just get more and more excessive.” Sometimes, Diane will ask him a very simple question, like what movie he’s going to watch with Bruce that evening, and he presses a hand to his forehead and goes “God, that’s way too much pressure.”

Steve’s sessions are emotional. He talks about Bucky and a love that’s remained silent for almost a century. He talks about loneliness and cynicism. Diane does her best to allow a cathartic amount of wallowing before she gets him to talk about hope.

Sam’s sessions are, arguably, the most complex. He resents how the others will sometimes use him for free therapy - “I mean, they’ve got you! We pay you!” - but struggles to feel useful in a group where he neither has enhanced genetics or a prodigal talent with weapons at his disposal. They talk about staying grounded when his career is in flight, new beginnings, and his dates with Catherine who works at the post office.

Natasha’s sessions are the most lighthearted, strangely enough for someone whose past is perhaps the darkest. She likes to change her hair often but it’s always shocking red. She knows herself utterly but struggles with how much to expose to her fellow Avengers. “They all see me as this - dark, sexy spy with a beretta strapped to my thigh,” she admits in one session. She’s wearing baggy jeans and a t-shirt that says _it’s gin o’clock_ . “In a way that’s kind of - more comfortable, than what the reality is. It’s easy to call them my _boys_ and wear lipstick when we hang out, because at least I know where I stand.” They talk about personal space and self care.

Clint’s sessions are interesting. Diane doesn’t even realise he’s deaf until he comes in one afternoon and explains that his hearing aids broke in his last mission. “I can read lips,” he says. “But I need you to speak clearly.” Diane knows a little bit of ASL, learns some more on Youtube that night after putting Miriam to bed. Clint is funny and affable but is often anxious. He can be self destructive. His three-day possession during the battle of New York wracks him with guilt. He’s a little bit in love with Natasha, but in his words, _it’s complicated_. They talk about finding direction and connecting with others. They also talk about Lucky and his fondness for pizza. Clint always smiles at her when he sees her.

Bruce’s sessions require both very little and a huge amount of work on Diane’s part. Bruce almost never deflects and responds to her advice readily. He knows his own pain like the back of his hand. But his progress is by far the slowest and set back miles whenever he has _an incident_. It takes Diane a few sessions to learn when to push and when to allow him his space. They talk about the Avengers and accepting his anger as something as essential as joy, or fear. Bruce also occasionally brings her fun anecdotes from the lab.

Diane is stretched a little thin. She finds new grey hairs in the mirror. She’s never loved her job more.

-

Tony requests an extra session two days after his own. “I don’t want to talk about me,” he says over the phone. Diane flatly refuses to speak to Friday. “It’s about you. Well, okay, no, that sounded ominous. It’s about something non-feelings related. To be honest, I’m not even going to be there, some other guy is,” he says. There’s the distinct clanging sound in the background. Diane hears a disapproving female voice going _what are you doing?_ and Tony says, “Hey, don’t touch that! I’m talking to my therapist, isn’t that great of me? Aren’t I learning and growing?”

The woman says something Diane can’t make out and Tony says to her, “Oh, you were asking about the alpaca?”

“Thursday afternoon sound alright? Four-thirty?” she says, despite really wanting to be a fly on the wall for this conversation.

“Oh shit! Yeah, sorry, Doc. Four thirty. Perfect. Gotta run - oh no, Pep, _don’t touch that!_ ” And the phone cuts out.

-

Thursday afternoon rolls around. Tony promised that this wasn’t for a patient, but even so, Diane straightens out the room, puts the kettle on like she always does. Tomasz left at four. At four thirty exactly, the light comes on by the door. Someone is in the waiting room.

Diane hopes this won’t take long. She doesn’t want to be late picking up Miriam from soccer practice.

When she opens the door she comes face to face with a tall, bald man. He’s in neat black clothes, he has dark skin. There’s a patch over his eye.

He’s not as broad as Steve or as stony as Natasha but he’s absolutely terrifying. 

“Mr. Fury,” Diane says, calmly, and gestures for him to come inside. He nods and doesn’t say anything as he follows her in. “Can I get you a coffee?” she asks.

“No, thank you,” Fury says. His voice isn’t what she expected. She expected something deep and cold, but Fury’s tone is light, a little Southern. 

He sits on the couch opposite her. Diane waits for him to start. This isn’t technically a session, according to Tony, but when they’re in her office he’s going to start. Her terms, her space.

“Your name has come to my attention, Doctor Yang,” Fury says. His expression is totally unreadable.

“I understand that you are the employer of some of my patients,” Diane says.

“ _Employer_ is one word for it,” Fury says, a flicker of amusement in his eye. “Not the word I would use.”

“What word would you use?”

“ _Handler_.”

“I see,” Diane says. She imagines going to Fury about petty office squabbles and printers jamming. She can’t imagine it.

Fury takes in her space with bland interest. “I’m here to make you an offer regarding your practice,” he says. He unfolds a small smartphone from his pocket which opens up into a larger touch screen. He pulls something up and offers it out to her.

It’s a document. There’s a title at the top, written in bold. 

_SHIELD Mental Health Program Manager_

There’s a job description. A list of duties. A salary that makes Diane’s eyebrows shoot up.

“You’d oversee a department of four, with room for growth if necessary,” Fury is explaining as she reads. “You’d take on some patients yourself - I assume the Avengers would prefer to keep seeing you, considering the progress you’ve made with them so far,” he says. “There’s an online system where staff can make appointments. You’ll be responsible for pastoral care on site. You’ll have an office in the compound with an assistant to help you organise paperwork.”

Diane doesn’t reply immediately. She scans the document twice. “I would have to dissolve my current practice,” she says.

“You can keep your premises if you want. But your office would be in the compound, yes, which is towards Mason Neck,” Fury says.

“Long commute,” Diane remarks idly.

“We can make that easier for you.”

“How?”

Fury shrugs one shoulder. “Jet.”

Diane takes a moment to digest that. 

“The hours aren’t flexible,” she says. “I’m fostering to adopt. Having my own practice allows me to be on call for her.”

“There’s an onsite creche,” Fury says. He sounds almost bored. “We can arrange for a carer to mind her if you’re unavailable. Your salary allows you to pursue childcare independently if you’d rather place her outside of ours, although that’s not something I’d recommend.”

No kidding. This new salary could buy Miriam a _pony_ , let alone some additional childcare. She’ll have to come up with some better excuses.

“I have patients outside of the Avengers,” she says, quieter. 

Fury rolls his eye. “We can arrange for a transition for them to see other doctors, either at your recommendation or our own. We can pay the fees. This is a very good opportunity, Doctor Yang. Everyone wants to be on the side of the Avengers.”

Diane thinks about the shadowy _we_. She thinks about how consuming her Avengers sessions are. She thinks about Natasha giving her a genuine grin after cracking a stupid joke in her last session, about how Bruce relaxes seemingly the moment he sits down opposite her.

“Think about it,” Fury says.

-

Diane’s new office faces the forest. The windows can be frosted at the touch of the button. It’s a less spacious room than her old practice but it feels less crowded. Her desk sits in one corner. She brought the couch and the armchair with her when she moved.

They’ve given her a discretionary budget to decorate the place. There are four other therapists working in her department and she spreads it amongst them, telling them to go online and pick what they want. She takes Miriam on a day trip to buy some decor and realises the mistake in bringing an eight year-old to IKEA.

Her secretary, Gabby, is unbelievable. She speaks nine different languages and by day two a colour-coded timetable with profiles of every registered patient is in Diane’s inbox. They have their first departmental meeting and she brings possibly the best cupcakes that Diane has ever eaten. Gabby’s desk is _covered_ in pictures of her wife and she spends more or less her entire lunch hour simpering down to the phone to her. It’s just a little bit revolting.

“They haven’t put me through any security checks, for a government agency, I thought that was a bit strange,” Diane says to her one morning.

Gabby shrugs. “Probably know all your sordid secrets already,” she says, flippantly.

At the end of her first week, Gabby tells her she has a visitor. Tony Stark sticks his head around the door.

“Sorry to drop by unannounced,” he says. Diane smiles at him. 

“Come on in, Tony. Nice to see you,” she says.

Tony gives her a bright grin. “Nice to see you too, Doc. I’m not sticking around. I just came by to see your new digs. Like what you’ve done with the place,” he says. He lugs a large cardboard box in with him. “Housewarming gift.”

Diane’s eyes go wide. She’s aware that a gift from Tony Stark could be anything from a smartphone to a small atomic bomb.

It’s a coffee machine.

It’s a sleek, unassuming thing that fits perfectly on the shelf by the window. It comes with pods with descriptions in Italian that Diane doesn’t understand. He’s also brought her a load of mugs with stripes on them. “Gift from Pepper,” he explains. “She wanted to send you flowers and champagne, you’ve done such a great job with me. I told her that was inappropriate.”

“This is a _little_ inappropriate,” Diane says. She places a pod in and presses a button. Less than a minute later she has possibly the most perfect cappuccino she’s ever had. “Thank you, Tony. This is very thoughtful.”

It’s only after Tony leaves that Diane notices the colours of the mugs. Black with red stripes, red with gold stripes, green with purple stripes. Colours of the team. She smiles and arranges them next to the radio.

Gabby pages her from outside. Something about Natasha Romanov standing outside.

Diane looks around at her office. She grins to herself. Presses the button on her desk to talk to Gaby. “Let her in,” she says.

-

She fits in well at SHIELD. Miriam comes by one afternoon and her entire department falls in love. Gabby gives her a load of sweets from behind her desk and Diane has to deal with the subsequent sugar rush when she gets home.

Wanda Maximoff is her newest patient. They speak once a week. She talks in a quiet voice that’s full of grief. She’s so _young_ , barely twenty, with a pallid face and thin fingers that clench together when she talks about her brother.

“They try to mentor me,” she says, her eyes heavy. “The guys. I don’t want a _mentor_ . I want _out_.”

“What would you do if you weren’t an Avenger?” Diane asks her.

Wanda sighs. She turns her head to look out of the window. “I don’t know. I have - good people here. Family now. But I have never known anything else. The most interesting thing about me is my ability to hurt.”

Diane holds that for a moment. “Tell me about your fellow Avengers. What’s the first thing that springs to mind when I ask you about, say, Natasha?”

Wanda cocks her head to one side, considering. “She’s very clever,” she says. “Cleverer than she lets other people think. She also really likes Battlestar Galactica and she thinks I don’t know.”

“And if I ask you about Steve?” Diane asks.

“ _Funny_ ,” Wanda says. “He’s so funny. Much funnier than the others who _think_ they’re funny. He has a dark sense of humour. He often makes jokes that you don’t realise til later. He’s very sarcastic.”

They go through Wanda’s teammates until she gets frustrated. “Why are you asking me about the others? I thought I was supposed to talk about myself here,” she says.

Diane smiles at her easily and folds her hands in her lap. “All of your teammates are integral to the Avengers because of their strength. I mean, primarily. They’re all individuals who bring something different to the table but they are largely valued by their ability to use force, in various ways. You didn’t mention that capability once when talking about them. You talked about them being funny, or clever, or interesting. So why do you only value yourself in relation to your abilities in battle?”

There’s a quiet between them. Diane allows herself to feel, unprofessionally, the tiniest bit triumphant.

“I didn’t think about it like that,” Wanda says in a small voice. 

“Then maybe I can ask you again,” Diane says, gentler. “What would you do if you weren’t an Avenger?”

Wanda considers the question for a moment. “I think,” she says, tentatively. “I would like to be a teacher.”

-

They bring in the Winter Soldier as April winds howl around the compound. Diane isn’t aware of all the details. She hears chatter outside of her office and outside, by the trees, three cadets are pelting full speed towards the building. 

An hour later, there’s a call from Fury’s office assistant asking her if she’d be willing to come in early on Monday to perform a psych evaluation.

Diane doesn’t sleep that night. She lets Miriam stay up a little bit past her bedtime just for the company. She falls asleep in Diane’s lap on the couch. Diane reads the Winter Soldier file that arrived in her inbox this afternoon.

_Agent 19037 (codename: BLACK WIDOW) performed unauthorised reconnaissance of Asset 32257 (codename: WINTER SOLDIER) on 03/26 during which BLACK WIDOW’s identity was uncovered. Dispute occurred in Cahul, Moldova, during which WINTER SOLDIER agreed to meet with Agent 9876 (codename: CAPTAIN AMERICA) on 04/02 in Oancea, Moldova._

_Altercation occurred between CAPTAIN AMERICA and members of the terrorist cell HYDRA on the evening of 04/01 in Oancea. WINTER SOLDIER intervened but was captured by HYDRA agents. BLACK WIDOW alerted SHIELD to proceedings on 04/02. WINTER SOLDIER recovered on 04/06._

The report is clipped and formally written. The bare bones of information, and even then, much of the document is redacted. 

_Four days_ , Diane thinks. Natasha approached the Winter Soldier. Convinced him to meet Steve. Someone must have followed Steve, bugged him, _something_ , and used him to get to Bucky. Diane’s route out of the building takes her past the hospital wing. It was packed and panicking when she left that night.

She thinks about the force necessary to take down two enhanced super-soldiers. She thinks about those black, redacted four days. 

Miriam shifts in her sleep. She frowns as she wakes up; Diane should have made her go to bed. She gets stressed out when she wakes up somewhere unfamiliar, even if it’s just the couch.

“Diane?” she whispers. Her voice is so small.

Diane flips the Winter Soldier file shut. She tucks an arm around her and musses up her hair. “Yeah, honey,” she says, trying to be soothing. “You’re safe right here.”

-

The Winter Soldier dossier is vast. Diane reads it in between Miriam’s swimming lessons and soccer practice on the weekend. She mostly stares at it during the evening after she’s gone to bed; Diane spends all day schooling her expression but she can’t do that as she reads that file.

A lot of the scanned documents are information given by Steve and Sam. There are the original Russian reports on him - Barnes fell from the train in 1945. They don’t have documents until 1949. Four years lost. In that time, they were building the first prototypes for his arm.

There are pictures. They’re grainy black and white scans, mostly. That doesn’t make them any less horrifying.

One is of Barnes, probably the clearest one they have of him. He’s hunched up against the corner of a filthy cell. His arm is a stump and the bandages cover it up to his shoulder. He has a stringy beard and is glaring furiously at the camera. He’s pale, thin. He’s naked.

There are several photos of the arm, both attached and detached from his body. It’s often laid out on a thin pillow. Some photos show the wires inside, others show the articulation of the fingers. It looks like they went through several different models. A photo dated in 1952 shows someone meticulously painting a star on the shoulder.

None of these photos show Bucky’s face.

At the very end of the dossier, which Diane reads in the early hours of Monday morning, there’s a short profile on James Buchanan Barnes. There’s a biography of his life in Brooklyn with Steve, the jobs he held, some significant family members. Diane sees the name of his sister, Rebecca Barnes. She’s almost a hundred years old but still sharp. Apparently she lives in France with her husband.

There’s another photo. Bucky is upright and smiling. He has an open, handsome face, he looks as though he’s on the verge of breaking into laughter. At the corner of the photo is a blurry outline of someone in the background. Someone skinny and small, raising up a hand.

 _You_ , Diane thinks, looking at the picture. _I’m going to bring you home_.

-

The evaluation is scheduled for eight in the morning. Diane arrives at seven thirty. The evaluation is pushed back to nine. Then ten. Then after lunch.

Diane eats her salad at her desk and stares at the Winter Soldier documents. 

Gabby pages her from outside around one and says that Nick Fury wants to see her in his office. The long walk up to the ninth floor is always nervewracking the few times Diane has made it. Fury’s office is up an unobtrusive flight of steps past the elevator. There’s one entrance and exit. 

“Doctor Yang,” Fury greets her. He looks tired. It takes Diane a moment to realise that they’re not alone - Natasha and Steve stood to one side. Their eyes widen a fraction when they see her. 

“Doctor Yang,” Natasha echoes Fury, inclining her head slightly. Diane has strict rules for encountering her patients outside of her office. Namely, she won’t acknowledge their relationship unless prompted to do so. She nods politely at Natasha.

“Agent Romanov,” she says. Natasha gives her a tiny, secretive smile.

Steve looks terrible. His eyes are guilty hollows, his hands twisting unhappily at his front. He’s still got a few bruises and scuffs on him. Diane thinks about how much worse they must have been last week. He doesn’t speak, just offers her half a grimace. 

“Your job today,” Fury says. “Is about understanding. You’ve done workplace psych evals before?”

Had this been any other day, Diane would’ve been a little insulted. “Countless ones,” she says.

“This ain’t that,” Fury tells her. “He’s said about three words since he woke up. Two of them were to thank the nurse.”

There’s a wet laugh from Steve’s direction.

Diane shifts in her seat. “Is he violent?” she asks. 

“Not thus far, but we can’t tell. From what little _information_ we have,” Fury says, with a narrow-eyed look at Steve and Natasha. “He can be easily provoked if he feels threatened. We’d like to send you in there to try and get him to talk.”

“This isn’t an interrogation,” Diane says. It’s with more insistence than it is phrased as a question. She’s not a soldier. Like Fury said; her job is about understanding.

“No,” Natasha says. “But it’s not confidential either.”

Diane wants to protest. She wants to have a private introduction with Barnes, ask some basic questions, and start building a plan for him like she would any other patient.

It doesn’t need to be said out loud that that’s not going to happen.

Barnes is being kept behind six feet of steel and concrete. The room has a thin bed, a toilet, a sink, and one chair. Security - an overencumbered, faceless guard outside the door - walks in front of her inside and places another chair down for her.

Barnes is standing, his back to the wall. He’s incredibly, impossibly still. Diane is reminded for a moment of Natasha and their first meeting.

“Hello,” she says politely and takes a seat. All of her policies are being broken at once. They’re being recorded by cameras hidden in the corners, she has a _file_ open on her lap, and she doesn’t wait for Barnes to start. Not a session, she reminds herself. Not an interrogation. _Understanding_.

Barnes doesn’t say hello back. He doesn’t even acknowledge that she’s stepped into the room.

“I have a file here with some information about yourself,” she says. No response. “It says here that your name is James Buchanan Barnes. Do you recognise that name?”

There’s silence. There’s silence that stretches for so long that Diane has time to wonder if they’re even ready for this. She opens her mouth to repeat the question.

“My name is Bucky.”

Barnes - _Bucky_ Barnes’s voice is hoarse. For a man stripped of his identity, he sounds utterly sure.

“Alright, Bucky,” she says. She thinks of Steve, watching this interaction on the cameras. Her heart aches for him. “My name is Diane, I’m a qualified trauma therapist and I work as SHIELD’s mental health program manager. I’m here to evaluate your mental state. I’m going to ask you some questions about yourself, there are no right or wrong answers. Do you understand?”

The pause is shorter this time. “I understand,” Bucky says. He speaks so low that his lips barely move.

Diane manages to give him what she hopes is an encouraging smile. “Do you know today’s date?” she says.

It’s a relatively innocuous question but it seems to throw Bucky enough to crack his unbelievable stillness. “I, uh.” He shifts, imperceptibly, flattening himself back against the wall. Diane gives him another small smile.

“No wrong answers. If you don’t know the date, that’s fine,” she says assuringly.

“I had a calendar,” Bucky says. His speech is so soft, hesitant, accentless. It’s incongruous with how deadly Diane knows him to be from the files. “A journal. I marked off each day. Sometimes - I lost a few days. I marked off the day before I was supposed to see Steve, which was April first. But I don’t know how long it’s been since then.” 

Diane nods. She doesn’t have to make notes. Every second of this conversation is going to be analysed and combed through, every pixel stored in locked-up archives. “It’s the ninth, today,” she says. “You were recovered by SHIELD agents on the sixth. You were unconscious for about a day.”

Bucky doesn’t react as though this is news to him. He nods his head once. “You keep saying SHIELD,” he says, slowly. “I know them by another name.”

Diane imagines a hundred agents in the building reaching for their weapons. “Could you elaborate for me?” she says.

“Hydra,” Barnes says, in a harsh breath. “I read the papers,” he cuts Diane off before she can explain. “I know what he did. What Steve did. I’m also not that _naive_ ,” he says. 

“Bucky,” Diane says, smoothly. “Hydra is gone. The organisation now known as SHIELD is run by the Avengers -”

Bucky looks abruptly furious. When he lifts his head his eyes are splintered silver, like knives. There’s no colour in his cheeks. He crosses the room to her chair in a split second. 

“You think I don’t know how they work?” he says, and Diane’s gentle attempts at de-escalation have gone so very badly. There’s a razor blade against her throat before she can speak. “Tell me where I really am,” he says. “Cut off one head -”

The door crashes open. There’s a blur of blue and Barnes is off of her, pinned to the wall by Steve.

“Bucky, _stop_ , she’s good, she’s with me, it’s okay -”

“I am _not_ ,” Barnes says, a little breathless from Steve’s grip, his face twisting like he’s reignited some old injury. “As blind as you are.”

Natasha appears in the doorway half a second later, helping a shocked Diane to her feet. “You’re safe,” she assures her. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Natasha moves to guide her out of the room but Diane shakes her head minutely at her. “You don’t have to trust me,” Steve is saying.

“I _don’t_ ,” Barnes snaps back, still struggling. Steve’s expression crumples.

“I promise, you’re not with them. You’re not with Hydra anymore. You’re safe,” he says, and it’s a voice Diane recognises from the news. Steady and sure. It’s Steve’s Captain America voice.

Barnes gives him and Diane a look that could burn cities. “How the hell do you even know? You always were a too trusting son of a-”

“She’s my _therapist_ ,” Steve snaps.

There’s a well of silence. Bucky stops struggling against Steve’s arm.

“Your _what_ now?” he says.

-

Diane sits tiredly in Fury’s office and listens to world-famous superheroes argue.

“How in the _hell_ ,” Fury is saying. “Did that man get a razor blade? His shoes don’t even have soles! We gave him _crocs_. We searched all his gear, scanned the arm, we stripped him when he was out -”

“You did _what?_ ” Steve explodes.

“A lot of spies keep razor blades under their tongues, or have them sewn in under the skin,” Natasha offers helpfully.

“He’s not a spy,” Steve says. He sounds utterly defeated.

After Steve gave an impromptu, impassioned testimony of Diane’s skills as a trauma therapist, Natasha had also admitted, none too pleased, that she also saw her. Bucky had stared at them both and had said he didn’t want to talk anymore.

Diane is moderately shaken from having a blade to her neck.

She listens to Steve, who seems to have taken an insistent lead on what to do with Bucky, go round in circles with Fury and Natasha about next steps and potentially moving him off site. It’s getting close to five. She needs to leave soon to pick Miriam up from swimming class.

Steve is fixating on the fact that Bucky spoke with recognition and called himself by a childhood nickname to Natasha’s exasperation before Diane speaks.

“Is that the room that he sleeps in?” she asks. The three of them fall silent.

“It’s safer to keep him in one place,” Fury says. Steve opens his mouth and Natasha jabs him in the ribs.

Diane hums pensively. “I think you should move him to a different room. One with a window,” she says. There’s a puzzled silence. “Before he got angry, he talked about having a diary of sorts. I’m assuming that when Hydra had him, they took it away. It obviously makes him calmer to note the passing of each day. If you can’t give him a pen and paper, a window will do it. He can see the sun rise and set,” she says.

Steve is looking at her with sad eyes. “Obviously,” he says. He exhales roughly and walks out of Fury’s office without another word.

“Doctor,” Fury says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Please schedule a psych evaluation with Captain Rogers as soon as possible.”

Diane inclines her head. “I have to go pick up my daughter,” she says, into the ensuing silence. They thankfully let her go.

Clint appears in her doorway like a shadow as she’s packing her bag. “Heard about Barnes,” he says. Diane schools her expression to neither confirm nor deny. “You alright? You need an Avengers-escort home?”

Diane really needs to send around a guide to appropriate boundaries in the workplace. “Quite alright, thank you, Clint,” she says neutrally. “I don’t feel threatened.”

Clint shrugs. “Rest of us sure do. The Winter Soldier is legendary. He could’ve killed you in there before Steve got to him,” he says, and then meets her eye and backpedals superbly. “Uh. Sorry. That’s not very comforting.”

Diane takes pity on him. She sets her bag down on her desk. “I had a patient once who had been a prisoner of war for five years,” she says, quietly, thinking back. “In our first session he was startled by some building works outside the office and pulled a gun on me.” Clint’s eyes widen. “He was very traumatised, it wasn’t his fault. He was triggered. I managed to talk him down. It was nervewracking, but I didn’t see him as a threat,” she muses.

“Pretty wild,” Clint says. “For you to talk him down. He could’ve shot you.”

Diane shrugs modestly. “He could have. He didn’t. I’ve written a few papers on de-escalation,” she says. 

Clint touches the bow at his back. “My de-escalation technique is right here. It’s impressive what you do,” he says, and he pauses for a moment. Diane picks up her bag. “You’re a really good trauma therapist.”

Diane gives him a smile. “I know,” she says.

-

She tries again with Bucky two weeks later. She watches some of the tapes and speaks to Steve about how he’s faring. There was some regression but he’s ready to talk again. Steve talks lovingly about the progress he’s managed to make in such a short time.

“It’s not progress,” Natasha says, in a morning session, her nose in a mug of mint tea. “Steve says you’re good. Barnes trusts him.” She pauses and takes a long sip. “Dumbasses.”

Diane cleverly schedules for Miriam to have a sleepover on the afternoon of her session with Bucky. She has a feeling this could go on for hours. She gave Lila’s mom the office number to call for emergencies - her eyes had gone very wide at the logo in the corner of the card.

“Hello, Bucky,” she says pleasantly as she sits opposite him. There’s a glass and stone wall between the two of them. In the corner of the frame, she can see a window over the bed.

“Hi,” Bucky says. His voice is quiet. Better than last time, Diane thinks.

She stays quiet. This isn’t a therapy session, but she waits for him to speak first. Lets him start on his own terms.

It takes forty three seconds (she counts) but he does. “I’m sorry about last time,” he says.

“It’s not a problem,” Diane says smoothly as if she doesn’t think too much about the razor blade against her throat. “I understand that you believed you were in Hydra’s captivity?”

“Who told you that?” Bucky says, his voice a little sharper. He’s so _still_. Diane gives him a steady look.

“Bucky,” she says. “I was there.”

For a terrifying super-soldier he looks suitably chagrined. He nods jerkily. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Steve - he straightened some stuff out for me. He told me I was safe.”

“And you trust his perspective?” Diane says.

A lot goes on behind the shadows of Bucky’s dark eyes. “More than I trust my own,” he settles on.

-

They go over how Bucky is currently feeling. If he’s in any pain. If he’s hungry or tired. If he’s been able to sleep. He answers these questions with a careful uncertainty - Diane realises he doesn’t quite know the answers to them.

She asks him about his memories. She asks him how conscious he’s been of time passing since the incident in the Potomac. She’s expecting more uncertainty but Bucky surprises her by answering with ease. He remembers everything from the day the helicarriers went down, although he admits he was very sick for the first few months. His memories of his killings with Hydra are crystal clear and he recounts a couple until Diane politely, steadily tells him that won’t be necessary. 

Towards the end of the assessment, Diane asks him how much he remembers of his life before Hydra. Of before losing his arm. Bucky’s expression twists. For the first time since meeting him, he looks truly distressed. It makes him look so much younger.

Diane is approaching forty five. She realises that Bucky is, technically, almost seventeen years younger than her. Years of professional discretion are the only thing from stopping the pang in her heart showing on her face.

“I remember parts,” Bucky says softly. “They’re - they’re like someone else’s memories,” he says. “I’m not that guy anymore.”

“You don’t have to be.”

Bucky looks at her with an unreadable expression. “There’s a guy no doubt listening to this conversation right now who would beg to differ.”

It’s an alarmingly sophisticated take for a guy whose file is plastered with _ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS - VOLATILE - DO NOT APPROACH_.

Diane finishes the assessment with a smile and a nod of thanks to Bucky. She goes back to her office and comforts in its stillness. She presses a button on the overengineered coffee machine. 

While it brews, she turns on her computer and opens up a blank document.

-

She has three separate, recorded evaluations with Bucky. They talk in hypotheticals, if he were to be presented with a potential threat, if he was in need of medical attention, if he were to have access to weapons. Bucky’s answers are blunt and oftentimes alarming but Diane’s assessment of him is that he isn’t a threat.

The only person who takes this well is Steve.

“You’re telling me he’s harmless,” Fury is saying to her in one of their many meetings. Steve is sat to one side, insistent on being part of everything to do with Bucky. Diane sends him a list of other therapists to prevent a conflict of interest and he doesn’t respond.

“I’m telling you that he’s not aggressive,” Diane says. “I don’t know what he’ll do if provoked or triggered. He’s able to speak candidly to me about himself. He’s been calm since he’s gotten here. He’s not trying to escape.”

From the way that Bucky talks it’s crystal clear to Diane that the reason he isn’t trying to escape is because Steve Rogers is never not in the same building. Bruce, in a throwaway comment in their session yesterday, mentioned he was sleeping in an unused dorm. She didn’t press. She never does.

Several things happen over the course of the month that Bucky is recovered. One of Diane’s staff goes on maternity and it’s a scramble to find a temp that’s qualified. Miriam has a lizard themed birthday party ( _kids_ , Diane thinks, bemusedly). She manages to have an appointment with every single Avenger, all of whom are deeply affected by the Winter Soldier’s reinforced room on the eighth floor.

Natasha says, “I remember him from the Red Room. He was so still. When they first introduced us he was sat at a table and we thought he was dead. They had him kill one of the girls who had tried to escape to teach us a lesson.” She sighs and slouches back against the couch. “I’m not afraid of who he is. That would be hypocritical. Frankly, it’s amazing that he can _talk_.”

Clint, in a relaxed afternoon session, says, “I think we all have some sort of experience being controlled against our will. Most of the Avengers - hell, most of the agents here. It’s a horrible feeling just coming back. I - I think I empathise with him, as much as it makes me want to vomit.” He’s quiet for a while. Diane lets it sit with him. “How’s your kiddo?” he asks.

Sam looks tired and asks if she can make his coffee decaf. “Doesn’t feel real,” he says. “He’s here. He came in. He’s not running, he’s not shoving his fist into Steve’s shield. He’s here and he’s _talking_ . I never thought we’d get that far. I thought we’d bring him home in a body bag,” he says. Diane asks him, gently, what he feels he wants his next steps to be. Sam laughs and says “ _sleep!_ ”

Bruce says he isn’t particularly close with Steve and doesn’t know too many details about the Winter Soldier trials. But, “I feel very moved by his story,” he ruminates on a rainy morning session. “Of being trapped in one’s own mind, uncertain of your identity. This idea of walking between two versions of yourself, unsure of which is which. It makes me think about The Other Guy. God knows where Barnes is going to end up,” he says.

Tony flops down on the couch in her last slot of the afternoon and says, “He killed my parents.”

Diane’s head jerks up. “What?” she says, completely forgetting herself.

Tony gives her a wry smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Yeah. I figured it out a while ago,” he says. He explains how a few files in the Hydra leak caught his eye. How he started probing into the Winter Soldier when he found out Steve was looking for him. A particular mission report from 1991 filled in the details Tony had been unsure of since he was a young man.

“He’s in the building right now,” Diane says. She’s on the cusp of a question but Tony, as usual, beats her to it.

“Yeah, look, I know I’ve just - gotta be nice. I know it wasn’t on him. I got the Winter Soldier files from Widow. Stomach turning, huh?”

Diane just inclines her head passively. Regardless of the Avengers all being terrible gossips, her treatment of Bucky is a tenuous and private thing.

Tony shifts uncomfortably. He checks a beautiful watch on his wrist. “I can’t be all-forgiving. I know what he went through but I sort of hate his guts. Does that make me a shitty person?”

It’s not a rhetorical question although Tony is fond of those. Diane pretends to ponder it for his sake. “Do you think it makes you a shitty person?” she asks. Tony sighs.

“Maybe I ought to be more sympathetic to the guy who got his arm sawed off and was tortured into becoming a killing machine, yeah,” he says.

“Not everything that we feel can be perfectly rational,” Diane says smoothly, mirroring his pose. “We’ve established that your grief over your parents’ death informed a lot of your formative years. To find out the true circumstances of their death would be a catharsis in any other situation, don’t you think?” she says.

Tony nods. “And - I feel as though that’s been taken away from me,” he says. His voice is quieter. Diane gives him a kind smile.

“You’re able to contextualise, Tony. That doesn’t mean that you can’t feel anger, or even rage, towards the person that killed your parents. Do you want to hurt him? Do you feel the need to seek out some sort of revenge?”

Tony is quiet for a long time. He’s usually so bright and joking, yammers at length for whatever’s on his mind. He’s been so quiet today. “He killed my mom,” he says, finally, and he sounds exhausted.

At the end of their session Tony says he’s going to take a break. Diane gives him an encouraging smile when he says he’s going to take Pepper somewhere nice, let Stark Inc run itself for a couple weeks. She suggests Lake Tahoe.

-

The absolute and total secrecy surrounding the Winter Soldier weighs on Diane. She can’t even speak about it to her own therapist. His true identity is secret. His presence in SHIELD HQ is a secret. The fact that he’s alive and coherent is known to the Avengers, Maria Hill, Nick Fury and Diane herself.

Three months after they bring him in, he’s released through miles of red tape to Steve’s care. Apparently there is an unspoken debt that needs to be paid. Bucky volunteers as much information on Hydra as he can stomach and often more - Steve tells Diane that after his interviews, sometimes he’ll be sick.

“I hate seeing him in pain,” he says, in their second session since Bucky was brought in and the chaos has died down. “I hate it. They’re putting him through hell when he’s already been through it twice. I don’t know how much more of it I can take,” he says, his voice like steel.

Two months after Bucky goes to stay with Steve, Diane gets a phone call in her office. 

It’s her lunch break. Normally she doesn’t like to answer the phone on break, except - oh, she barely does anymore, does she? Principle of the thing.

“Hi, Diane.” Bucky’s voice is measured. 

“Hello, Bucky,” Diane says as if she’s talking to the mailroom guy. “What can I do for you?”

There’s a pause. “Well. It seems you’ve done a helluva job with Steve,” he says. “I was wondering - if you had any spaces open this week.”

A smile grows so wide on Diane’s face that she has to fight to keep it out of her voice. “How does Monday afternoon sound?” she says.

-

She makes sure she has an hour to herself before her first session with Bucky. It’s raining outside and she frosts one window but keeps one clear. She puts the lamps a little lower and swaps out the blue pillow on the couch for a burgundy one. She moves around the space carefully and makes it look warmer, softer, less busy. She puts the coffee machine on at five minutes to three.

She puts all the sharp objects in the locked compartment in her desk.

Bucky is precisely on time. Gabby buzzes him in. “I just walked in through the front door,” he says, bemused. He has a rain jacket on and gloves. He pulls one off his right hand and flexes his fingers. After a moment, he pulls the left glove off as well. The metal gleams in the light.

“Coffee?” Diane says. Bucky asks for it black with just a little sugar.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says with robotic politeness when she hands it to him. Diane smiles at him and gestures for him to take a seat. 

“No need for that, Bucky. Call me Diane.”

It’s startlingly similar to most first sessions. Diane asks him a few questions about his expectations and if he has any goals for his mental health. Bucky looks at her blankly for those. She talks to him about how she likes to conduct her sessions, what she expects from her patients, and what they can expect from her in return. 

Bucky is quiet. He nods, thoughtfully, when Diane explains to him the nature of a _safe space_. They spend a good forty minutes hashing out what the next few sessions are going to entail.

While she puts his details into her touchpad, he speaks in a much softer voice than before.

“I keep breaking shit,” he says.

Diane glances up. “What are you breaking?” she asks, gently.

Bucky grimaces. “Everything. Mugs. Doorframes. I know my own strength, I’m just fucking _jumpy_. I used to be able to sit still, barely breathe, for hours. Sometimes days. Now Steve says “mornin’” and I put a dent in the counter,” he says. His eyes are dark with guilt. “I broke his hand last week. S’why I called you.”

Diane quietly sets the touchpad down and folds her hands in her lap. “Did you have an argument?” she asks and Bucky shakes his head.

“He put a hand on my shoulder to show me something. I ain’t used to people touching me. He put a hand on me and I broke it because it’s the only thing I know how to do,” he says.

In some ways, Bucky is the most unique case of trauma in the world. In other ways, it’s all so achingly familiar.

“Is Steve alright?” she asks, doesn’t let them sit in quiet for too long. Bucky nods, miserably. She takes his empty mug from him and sets it on the table. “You managed to hold that delicate mug in your hands the whole time we were talking without even cracking it,” she says, holding it up to the light so they can both see it. It’s Clint’s mug, with the black and purple. It has a chip in it from Clint knocking it off the table while gesticulating.

“I could’ve broken it,” Bucky says. 

“You didn’t,” Diane responds easily. “You picked up your phone and called me. You managed to make it here in one piece. It’ll take time. When we met, I don’t think you would’ve dreamed of calling me up for therapy.”

Bucky’s expression twists. He looks like any other young man, if you ignore the metal hand. Diane wonders what he would’ve been like in the forties, as beaming and confident as Steve describes him.

“I’m sorry about that, again,” he says. Diane waves him off.

“My point is that things change. Such is life. We’ll work together to help you change your behaviours for the better. Stop breaking shit, if you want to put it that way.”

Diane never swears. It seems to put Bucky at ease.

“Yeah,” he says, half to himself. “I think I can do this.”

-

Their first ten sessions are trauma-response. In a way they’re easier and the hours go by quickly. Bucky is exceptionally hard working and focused. Diane can’t glean much of his personality outside of the occasional slip of his Brooklyn accent. He responds well to CBT but he’s still perfunctory and closed-off.

No one questions the built guy with long hair and plain clothes who shows up on Diane’s floor every Monday. He looks like just another agent with gloves on.

She clears out the hour before and after Bucky’s appointment just in case.

They slowly start introducing more of a discussion into their sessions. Bucky will sometimes snap and shut down. More than once, Diane sends him home early. He comes back the next week with muttered apologies. She always opens the door with a smile and has a black coffee, hint of sugar, waiting for him. 

It takes fifteen weeks before Bucky admits he’s in pain.

“My back hurts pretty bad,” he says, off-handedly, when she asks if he’s alright. He’s been shifting irately on the couch for most of the hour.

“Ah. Crick in your neck?” she asks. Bucky shakes his head.

“Half my skeleton is titanium. The arm weighs a fucking ton. It’s vibranium but all the components in it weigh it down. They had to replace a lot of my bones to make sure that the arm didn’t totally compromise my spine,” he says. 

He’s entirely clinical as he speaks. He flexes the fingers of his left hand and looks at the metal plates dispassionately. 

“My shoulder aches most days. I didn’t really think about it when I was - you know,” he says, supremely awkwardly. 

Diane hums and brings up a file on her touchpad. Bucky is comically fascinated by it. Occasionally he’ll press his fingers so gently to the screen and his eyes will go massive when it lights up. “If I show you this chart,” she says - it’s a simply worded pain scale - and passes it over to Bucky. “Could you tell me which one you feel applies to you?”

Bucky mulls it over for far too long. He hands it back to her. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he says, simply. 

“Do you feel the pain in your shoulder prohibits you from doing tasks?” Diane asks.

“Nothing has ever prohibited me from doing a mission,” Bucky says. His voice is imperceptibly colder. Diane can see a little bit of that steel shutter across his eyes again. 

She changes tactics. Smiles. “Well, I’ve certainly poured my coffee in my cornflakes when I’ve got a bad headache,” she says. “You’re not doing missions now, Bucky. You have such a dedicated level of self-control. If you allowed yourself to focus on that ache in your shoulder a bit more, what would you do? Would you want an ice pack or maybe to lie down?”

There’s another long pause. The steel is gone. Bucky looks down at his lap and back up at her again.

When he speaks it’s with a quiet, tired voice that Diane has never heard before. “I think I would be screaming.”

-

With Bucky’s permission, Diane sets him up an appointment with SHIELD medical. Three days later she receives a _very_ abridged medical report that doesn’t really make much sense.

She has a session with Steve two days after that. It clears it up for her pretty good.

“He’s just been sitting with it, all this time,” Steve says. He’s pacing. He declined Diane’s offer of coffee. He talks with his hands. Diane is fairly sure he’s forgotten that she’s there.

“He’s _hurting_ , so unbelievably much. The arm was weighing him down. It has a chemical release to keep him sluggish - this is _sluggish_ , for Bucky, and he sleeps three hours a night as far as I can tell. They removed the drug and within two hours he was begging them to knock him out. He didn’t want me to be in the room,” Steve says. He’s a little breathless. “He’s hurting. I can’t help him. Stark said he’d modify the arm, which is _actively killing him_.”

“Steve,” Diane says, her voice quiet and steady. “Please sit down.”

Steve does, thankfully, and buries his head in his hands. “I am so angry,” he breathes. “I thought I’d be happy to have him with me. And I am. But every day is ripping me to pieces. Watching him stare out the windows and turn into someone else to protect himself when we’re in public - I love him. I _love_ him. I don’t know how much more I can bear witness.”

Sometimes, after Steve’s sessions, Diane finds herself on the verge of tears. This might be one of those days. 

There is a level of detachment one has from a patient. Diane speaks to people about their secrets all day long. There is, however, something about the Avengers, who risk their lives in the most unique of ways, that has wormed its way under her skin. Diane’s professionalism is impeccable. She is not, however, made of stone.

Steve’s session isn’t particularly productive. Diane can tell it’s good for him to get his pain out in a room that doesn’t have Bucky in it. He’s dry-eyed when he leaves her office. 

She picks up Miriam from school. Miriam flies over to her in the playground and launches herself into Diane’s arms. She jabbers about how her painting got a gold sticker. When they get home, Diane insistently puts it in a frame in the living room. 

She puts her to bed at eight. Afterwards, she has a mug of tea that Natasha gave to her - camomile. She goes to bed and cries.

-

SHIELD medical send her cryptic and half-redacted updates regarding Bucky’s condition. She doesn’t see him for weeks. Tony’s sessions have been reduced down to once a month because of his progress, but he emails her at five in the morning on a Sunday with a _bcc; thought you’d want to know_. They’re removing the arm entirely until they can figure out how to treat Bucky. 

She emails him back with a copy of the mental health program’s extensive confidentiality clause. He responds less than a minute later with _sorry doc_. She sighs.

Around the time of her first sessions with Steve, just before it felt like her life kicked into overdrive, she officially filed for adoption of Miriam. The paperwork was long and extensive, with endless meetings with social workers and the school and jumping through hoops that seemed to get ever-narrower. 

She reshuffles her work calendar for Tuesday so that she can come in late. She spends the morning watching the latest social worker peer around her house, talk to Miriam like she’s four and not nine. They sit down for a talk in the kitchen.

“Being a single parent is a tough job,” the social worker says. Diane resists the urge to roll her eyes. This again, she thinks.

“I believe I have the appropriate resources to give Miriam a stable home life,” she says with a plastic smile.

The social worker - who has some stuffy old name like _Maureen_ or _Judy_ \- eyes her suspiciously. “A child doesn’t benefit from their primary caregiver having short lived or unstable relationships. Men coming in and out,” she says. 

Diane summons the strength of a very long career in treating volatile patients. She smiles again. “I don’t partake in relationships. My last one was in college. Almost twenty years ago,” she says.

“Don’t you think that, then, presents an unrealistic, potentially unhealthy view of relationships towards a growing girl?” Janice, or perhaps Frances, asks.

“Would you rather I have a guy over?” Diane can’t help but say. She scolds herself internally. _Your daughter_ , she repeats to herself.

They hash out Diane’s potential relationship status for almost half an hour. If she has to hear the words _single mother_ again, she might actually slap someone. 

The second part of the conversation is even worse. Edith, or was it Elaine? Asks her about accidentally imparting Korean beauty standards onto an insecure young girl, and then asks if they celebrate Christmas _in your home country_. 

By the time she asks her about her citizenship status, something that Diane had to defend when she first started fostering _three years ago_ , she’s digging her hands together under the table so tightly that she leaves marks. 

“I’m an American citizen. All the documents concerning my living here, property ownership, and my practice are in my file,” she cuts across as Gertrude starts talking about _volatility_ again. 

“Yes, let’s talk about your work life. You treat patients who have violent tendencies,” she says. 

Diane’s initial reaction is to be defensive, aggressively so, and just about manages to keep her temper in check. It’s been a long morning. 

“I treat patients from a variety of backgrounds,” she says. “I specialised in trauma therapy during my doctorate.”

“Has a patient ever threatened you? Stalked you, showed up at your house?”

Agnes knows this. Because it’s in her file. Just like the rest of the topics they’ve covered in this nonsense conversation, over and over again. Diane exhales. “Yes,” she says. “A decade ago. I involved the police and the case has since been resolved. It’s in my file,” she says, as gently as possible.

“Just trying to get all the facts,” her social worker says. Diane misses the last guy. He was affable and told her she was a great candidate. 

The interrogation goes on, and on. It’s nothing Diane hasn’t heard before. This time, though, the woman seems particularly interested in her work at SHIELD. 

“You’re not able to give me any information at all,” she says, deeply suspicious. 

Diane grits her teeth. “It’s sensitive government information. I’d have to run any details by my employers before I share any patient info,” she says. 

“Any work you bring home, we have a responsibility to be informed,” Blanche says primly.

Diane feels like lashing out. _Would you like to know about Captain America’s progress with psychodynamic psychotherapy? Is that relevant to how well I can parent my child?_ She wants to say. She doesn’t. She goes into work an hour later with the tension still knotting her spine. 

Bucky is her first appointment of the day. Tony’s email was frustratingly helpful, but the sight of him without the arm is still a shock. His face looks a little grey. This is the first time they’ve seen each other in weeks.

“How are you feeling?” she asks as they sit down, coffees in hand.

Bucky motions to the hollow sleeve at his side and gives her an exhausted, tiny smile. “Little lopsided,” he says. It takes Diane a few seconds to realise he’s _joking_.

She smiles back. It feels genuine.

-

Her disastrous appointment with the social worker requires her to fill out several more forms regarding her work. She sends off a series of signoffs for Fury and allows herself to be amused at the thought of him presented with forms from DC’s department of CPS. 

Some of the Avengers - namely Natasha, Clint and Tony - reduce their hours down, citing the progress they’ve made since they started seeing her. Diane tells them her door remains open. After the stress of Bucky’s case and the adoption interviews, it feels like a necessary triumph. 

Bucky gets his arm back after a month. It looks a little different when he sees her. He pulls up the sleeve to show her that the red star is gone and says it feels much lighter, less painful. His sensory processing is “shot to hell”, in his own words, and when she hands him his coffee he shatters the mug immediately. 

“Fuck, sorry,” he says, hastily cleaning himself up with his flesh hand. Their apologies overlap each other. 

He and Steve are apparently doing some sort of touch therapy at home in order for him to get used to the new mechanics of his arm. Steve mentions it briefly in one of their now-infrequent sessions, and is so red when talking about holding hands that Diane takes pity on him and allows him to change the subject.

“You think something might be going on between those two?” Sam says, during a pleasant lunchtime session. Diane tells him it’s not their place to speculate.

-

It comes crashing down. It’s a Friday and Diane has had, by all accounts, a good day. She finished up with Clint early and was able to watch the tail end of Miriam’s soccer practice.

She wraps an arm around her as they walk home, taking the long route back so they can see the leaves that are turning golden.

Her keys are halfway towards the lock when there’s a rustle behind her and a sharp pain in the back of her head. 

She’s out before she can hear Miriam scream.

-

The air is heavy and dank when she comes to. It’s so dark that everything around her is fuzzy, like peering through a thick fog. 

“Miriam,” she mumbles. She blinks a few times. She pulls at her hands - they’re strapped to the arms of the chair. “ _Miriam_ ,” she says, louder, more urgent.

“Mom?” Miriam’s voice is small and terrified. Diane’s heart shatters in her chest. She’s waited so long to hear her say that - endlessly patient, it’s taken so much work to make Miriam feel safe and welcome and like they’re a family. She never wanted to hear her say it like this. 

“I’m here,” she says, her voice shaking. “I’m here, honey. I can’t move right now. Can you follow my voice?”

Miriam doesn’t sound too far off. If Diane squints, she can make out the vague shape of her a few feet away. There’s red in the corner of her vision and her skin feels sticky. The chair is hard against her back. “I can’t move either,” Miriam says, and there’s a soft crackle. “I can’t - my hands are taped. I’m sorry, Mom,” she says.

It’s enough to make Diane well up. “No,” she says. “No, it’s okay. You’re okay. Just stay where you are, alright? We’re going to be okay. Are you hurt? Did anyone touch you?”

“They put a bag over my head,” Miriam says. “It sounded like a man. He said to be quiet otherwise he’d hurt you. We drove for ages. I don’t know where we are.”

“It’s okay,” Diane says. It’s all she can manage. It’s decidedly _not_ okay. Footsteps sound from across the room. As her eyes adjust, it looks like a garage. The air is cold. When she breathes in, she inhales dust. 

“Doctor Yang,” says an incredibly cold voice. It’s a man like Miriam said. Diane hears other footsteps. They’re not alone. 

“Please let her go,” she says before he can say anything else. “Please, she doesn’t know anything, she’s just a kid. Please.”

A hand shoots out of the dark and pins her shoulder to her chair. Tears spring from her eyes and roll down her cheeks. “Please don’t,” she whispers.

“No one has to get hurt. We just want some information,” the man says. Diane can see his face a little clearer now. His voice is American, his features are cruel. “You know our enemies better than most. Better than any agent.”

“I don’t know anything,” Diane says. Her voice is shaking enough to disguise any lie, her tears are real. “Please. Neither does my daughter. Please just let her go.”

“She’ll remain unharmed if you tell us the truth,” he says. Someone comes up behind Miriam’s chair and holds her shoulders down. She starts yelling, kicking her legs, trying vainly to break her hands free. Diane starts yelling. Her voice breaks. “Don’t touch her, please don’t hurt her,” she begs.

“A simple question, to start,” the man says. The hand on her shoulder tightens to the point of pain. “You work with the Asset. The Winter Soldier. Where is he?”

Diane shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she says. She has no idea where Steve lived. Last time they spoke he was looking at apartments in New York. “I don’t know, he was released from SHIELD months ago -”

There’s a hard slap across her face. “Where is he? Answer me truthfully or next time, it’ll be the girl,” the man says. 

“ _Please_ ,” Diane sobs. A shadow walks towards Miriam. There’s a roar in her head. She pulls as hard as she can at the tape, screams, _no, don’t_ -

The wall explodes.

The blast is close enough that it knocks her chair sideways and she lands heavily, hard enough to send her head spinning. The shock of light is piercing. She can see Miriam still upright but the man approaching her was knocked backwards, scrambling to stand. 

Someone is kneeling next to her, righting her chair. There’s a blast of orange to her left. “ _Gentlemen_ ,” Tony Stark’s voice booms out from an unseen speaker. Diane can hear the faint twang of an electric guitar.

Natasha is setting her chair back upright and cuts through the tape in one swipe. “Can you stand?” she says. Diane nods, wobbles to her feet with her help. “Miriam -” she says. 

Natasha keeps her standing. “Clint’s got her,” she says. As if on cue, she sees Clint helping Miriam out of the chair and to her feet. 

“You know,” he shouts over the din. There are agents in black swarming the space. One gets close to her and a circular shield knocks the guy right back into a wall. “You are _just_ the right age to start archery. You ever shot an arrow before?” Miriam’s eyes are wide and confused, she shakes her head. Clint pats her cheek, strategically blocking her view of an enormous green Hulk sending seven different armed men flying in one kick.

They’re rushed out under Clint’s arm. Steve joins them, holding a shield over Diane as she pulls Miriam tight against her side. 

One of the men, the one who’d hit her, tries to force his way after them. Something stops him and his face goes white. “ _Soldier_ ,” he says, his voice a croak.

“Right here, you piece of shit,” Bucky says. He tears forward, right past them. He doesn’t have a mask on and his hair is pulled off his face. He kicks the guy in the chest and Diane turns her face away hurriedly. 

“Probably shouldn’t swear in front of the kid,” Sam calls, sweeping down from overhead.

“Yeah,” Tony’s voice sounds around them, a little tinny from his speaker. “ _Language_!”

The Avengers guffaw from their various positions. Diane wonders if she’s entered a very elaborate hallucination.

It’s a rush from there. She and Miriam are ushered into a chopper with Clint, who says something into an earpiece and it lifts off immediately. She glances outside the window. The building that they were being held in is squat and ugly, abandoned in the middle of a field. She hears Tony’s voice on an intercom say _all clear_ and it bursts into flames. The smoke billows past the windows of the chopper and she pulls Miriam in tight against her chest.

They’re both crying. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers into her hair. “God, honey, you’re okay, it’s going to be alright, you’re safe now.” She leaks out a few tears and strokes her back. Miriam hiccups against her shoulder and doesn’t say anything other than _Mom_ , which just makes her cry harder.

Clint sits opposite them and looks extremely uncomfortable. 

They’re escorted by a series of agents to the medical bay once they arrive at the compound. Miriam refuses to let go of her hand and Diane stares daggers at anyone who suggests it. Clint accompanies them, jovially says, “Avengers escort, remember? Offer’s always open.”

He stands outside the medical bay. Diane can see him on his phone through the window and after a few minutes he’s joined by Natasha, and then the rest of the Avengers who are in various levels of suited. Bucky gives her a wave through the window, his face smudged with ash, before Steve pulls him out of sight. 

Miriam has a few bruises and is mostly in shock. Diane has a concussion. They sit for a few hours, getting checked over, one of Diane’s own mental health team coming to see them and Diane has the novel experience of referring herself for a psych eval. Miriam is quiet and clings to her, but cheers up slightly when one of the doctors tells her how incredibly brave she is and gives her a sticker.

Gabby shows up around nine at night. “Fury wants a meeting. Says it can’t wait,” she says apologetically. “I’ll keep an eye on kiddo for you.”

Miriam adamantly refuses to be pulled away from Diane for a single second, starts getting teary at the very thought. She and Gabby compromise so that she can have a cupcake and they’ll sit right outside the door, so if she feels scared at any point she can come in. Diane really doesn’t care what Fury might have to say about that right now.

“Let me get this straight,” Fury says. He’s wearing a cashmere sweater that Diane can’t help but fixate on. They’re also not alone - every Avenger seems to have joined them.

“You held an unauthorised op, checked out _way too much_ firepower, and nobody thought it would be _appropriate_ to inform me that our mental health program manager was missing?”

Tony is back in an immaculate suit and is fidgeting with something metal on his hand, barely paying attention. “I feel like we used necessary force,” he says.

Fury exhales very loudly. “You _levelled_ the building. There were way too many of you. I’ve seen Romanov take on that amount of agents in an afternoon. Barnes isn’t even cleared for duty,” he says.

“I feel like I am now,” Bucky says from the back of the room. Steve is standing next to him and has a tiny smile on his face.

Someone hands Diane a cup of coffee. She downs half of it - _Folgers light roast_. Decaf. It’s perfect.

“You are usually the one with some sense,” Fury appeals to Natasha. She quirks an eyebrow at Diane. “You didn’t think to bring any of them in for questioning? They shouldn’t even know that the doctor had _any_ contact with Barnes, let alone that we’ve got him in the first place.”

“We were preoccupied with getting her and the kid to safety -” Clint argues, and Fury cuts him off as his voice gets louder.

“ _I am not speaking to you_ ,” he says. “And also! Who decided to blow up a wall with a _kid_ in the building?”

“I would say it was a controlled blast,” says Tony. “As the resident weapons expert-”

“In all fairness, it was a little dramatic,” Steve reasons from across the room. Tony clutches his chest, dramatically offended.

“You gonna throw me under the bus, Ice Town?”

Bucky frowns and looks at Steve. “Ice Town?”

Steve shakes his head and squeezes his shoulder. “It’s a reference to - never mind -”

“ _Enough_ ,” Diane says. The room goes quiet. She puts her mug down.

“Doctor Yang -” Fury starts. “ _No_ ,” Diane says.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she says. Everyone is standing while she and Fury are sitting down, but she doesn’t care. She’s so past caring at this point. “This is all so inappropriate,” she says, helplessly.

“Don’t worry about -” Steve starts and Diane interrupts him at the same time that Bucky elbows him viciously in the side.

“Don’t _worry!_ You think that they’re going to let me keep Miriam after this? Being a single mother, being an immigrant makes adoption hard enough but she could have _died_ today. They’re going to take away my daughter,” she snaps at him. “You shouldn’t even know she exists. My personal life should be totally out of reach, for all of you.”

“Diane, we respect your privacy,” Natasha tries to say gently. There’s a hair that’s escaped Diane’s bun and she blows it frustratedly off her forehead. 

“No you _don’t_ . Do you know how long it took me to write out SHIELD’s mental health confidentiality clause? Took me _weeks_ . The amount of emails I send to all of you, every day I’ve got to remind you that my other patients and my personal life is _not up for discussion_. God, there’s such a huge conflict of interest. I should have my license revoked. I might actually have my license revoked.”

She’s talking with her hands. Bruce very carefully dips into her peripheral vision and takes the mug away.

“I quit. I _quit_ , I’ve had it, I’m exhausted, I almost lost my daughter today and now I might lose her forever, you are all _terrible patients_ ,” she says. “I have a therapist, do you guys know that? Most therapists have one. And mine is _useless_ because I can’t tell him anything, because of the confidentiality clause that I had to write, so I didn’t spill any state secrets, which apparently doesn’t matter anyway because I was almost tortured for information!” she shouts.

The room is hollow with silence. She straightens up and walks out before anyone else can say anything. Miriam is waiting with Gabby outside the door. At the look on Diane’s face, she just hands her over without a word. 

“I’m taking a leave of absence,” Diane tells her as she nudges Miriam into her coat. “I’ll email you.”

Gabby nods.

There’s a driver waiting by the entrance to take them back to the house and Diane reluctantly takes it. “Director Fury would like to know if you require meals delivered,” he says, once they pull up. 

Diane helps Miriam out of the car. “Tell him to go to hell,” she says, and shuts the door. They stand together on the kerb in silence as they watch it drive away.

Miriam presses quietly against her side. “I don’t think we have anything in the fridge,” she says, her voice soft. Diane settles her hand on her shoulder and sighs.

“Screw it,” she says. “Let’s order pizza.”

-

No one contacts her for a week. Diane allows herself the time. She calls the school to tell them that Miriam’s off sick and the administrator tells her they’ve already received a doctor’s note. “Of course,” Diane says, hollowly, and hangs up. 

She does her best to keep things upbeat, or at least normal. They stay in their pyjamas for the first day and watch cartoons, and on the second day they bake brownies and Miriam tries on all of her scarves at the same time. She lets her play out in the garden the day after that and a car screeching in the distance gives her a scare and sends her right back inside. They usually stay in the same room after that.

She calls her therapist. 

He’s understanding. He refers her to a child psychologist so that Miriam has someone to talk to. It’s a relief to talk to someone who understands the extent to which she just might have imploded her own career.

After a week at home, she’s looking over her bank statements and figuring out the potential of an early retirement when there’s a knock at the door.

Miriam has been playing in her room and she crouches at the top of the stairs. They both watch the door but no one moves to answer it. Diane stands helplessly in the hallway.

“Diane,” Sam’s voice sounds. “It’s just me. It’s Sam.”

She exhales and moves to open the door. Miriam edges down a step. 

“Hi,” she says to him. She turns and says, “it’s okay. He’s - he’s a friend,” she says. Sam smiles and waves. 

“Hey. Miriam, isn’t it? Hear you think Falcon is pretty cool.”

Miriam nods slowly. “I like his wings,” she says.

“Smart choice. He’s certainly the most handsome Avenger,” he says. Diane exhales and ushers him into the kitchen. 

“I don’t have any coffee,” she says.

Sam shrugs it off. “All good. I’ve probably exceeded my caffeine intake for the day.” He takes a seat at the table and Diane sinks down opposite him. “Just wanted to check how you were holding up.”

She gives him a bemused smile. “Sam,” she says. “You’re my patient. It’s not appropriate for you to -”

He holds up a hand. “Actually, I’m not,” he tells her, and pulls out a folder from his bag. “None of us are.”

She opens it carefully. Inside are several forms, filled out in various peoples’ handwriting. Requests for transfers of mental health services. Diane approved a few of these since her time at SHIELD.

There’s a form for each Avenger, dated the day after she stormed out. Some, like Natasha and Clint, have requested to continue receiving internal help from another member of Diane’s team. Others, like Tony, have stated they’ll be seeking private therapy.

Each form has been approved. Diane’s schedule is suddenly very empty.

“You were right. Especially after what happened. Everyone was trying to get you to discuss everybody else, unintentionally or not,” he says, looking a little sheepish. 

She can’t say anything. A quiet stretches between them. “Turn the page,” Sam says. 

It’s a special request form. Allowing Diane and members of her team to discuss their work with a SHIELD-approved psychotherapist. Fury’s signature is at the bottom. 

“This is very kind,” she manages. Sam gives her a smile. 

“One more thing,” he says, and flips to the back of the folder. It’s a court summons for three weeks from now. Adoption finalisation. 

Diane can’t say anything. She stares at it. She’s spent so long imagining the day she received the form, the court date. She wanted to take Miriam out for ice cream afterwards. 

“You’re doing good work at SHIELD,” Sam says to her quietly. “You’ve done good work for the Avengers, helped us actually function as a team. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. Bucky cracked a _joke_ in the _staffroom_ yesterday. You’re a really good trauma therapist.”

“I know,” Diane says, a little thickly. Sam graciously doesn’t comment on the sheen in her eyes.

“If you never want to come back I’d understand. Really. And nobody would bother you again. Fury would - I don’t know, sort out your severance package or something. But I think you could do really great things at SHIELD, especially now that the Avengers aren’t haranguing you all week.”

“You were never _haranguing_ -” Diane says, trying to clear her throat of the lump there. She remembers unpleasantly that she called them all terrible patients last week. 

Sam shakes her off. He pushes the form towards her and stands up. After a moment he awkwardly hands her a tissue like she’s done to him, so many times. 

“Think about it,” he says. And then he smiles. “Door’s always open.”

-

One year later

The auditorium is packed out. Her agent told her that she should expect it, but to see the crowd is still a shock. Miriam takes to it naturally and waves at whoever looks their way. A photographer asks her to give them a twirl in her pretty dress and she _happily_ obliges. 

She eventually finds some kids her own age and appears at Diane’s shoulder to ask if she can go play. “Don’t get your shoes muddy,” Diane tells her. 

“Yeah, mom,” Miriam says and rolls her eyes. She dashes off in a cloud of sequins. 

“ _Walk_ , don't _run_!” Diane calls after her and gets a trickle of laughter in response. She sighs.

“Kids, right?”

“Sam,” she says with a smile when he appears behind her. She gives him and his girlfriend, Catherine, a quick hug. “It’s so busy. I didn’t expect it to be sold out so fast.”

Tony sticks his head into the conversation. “It’s because they think you’re going to spill all our dirty secrets. Well. Not mine. _People_ did that back in ‘05.”

“When are you going to stop talking about that article?” Pepper says exasperatedly. She plants a brief kiss to Diane’s cheek in greeting. “Congratulations.”

“Congratulations is right,” Tony says. “Where’s the champagne? Let’s do a toast!”

Diane flushes as several flutes of champagne are thrust towards her.

 _Atlas: Treating Trauma In The Age Of The Superhero_ by Doctor Diane Yang is an instant bestseller. In about half an hour she’s going to read an excerpt in front of several hundred people. The dedication reads, _to my daughter, Miriam_.

The various Avengers roaming around garner quite a bit of attention. Diane is aware that some of the sales were boosted by the fact that it’s known she runs SHIELD’s pastoral care. The Avengers don’t actually make an appearance in the book, outside of vague details under a pseudonym. Tony had offered to be interviewed as a case study and Diane had politely declined.

Natasha is lingering by one of the tables with Clint and Bruce, staring daggers at any of the photographers creeping around. She compliments her dress. Bruce pulls out his copy and asks her to sign it, which then prompts a whole crowd of people putting books and pens in her face.

Steve appears at her shoulder. “Let’s give the lady some space, folks,” he says, in his Captain America voice. People melt back as if pulled by the hand of god. One guy tries to push forwards with a question. Bucky steps out of the crowd and fixes him with a look and the guy takes several steps back.

“Nice to see you both,” Diane says. “How’s the new place?”

“Good to be back in Brooklyn,” Steve says cheerily, slinging his arm around Bucky’s waist. 

Diane gives the two of them a smile. “Thank you for coming, Bucky,” she says, her voice a little quieter. She can see his eyes sweeping the room and narrowing on anyone who gets too close.

He nods at her, leans a little closer into Steve. “Wouldn’t miss it. Congrats. Hear it’s good reading.”

“It’s not too bad,” Diane says dryly. They laugh. The emcee’s voice sounds over the intercom, asking everyone to take their seats. 

“Showtime,” Diane says and scans around for Miriam. Bucky wordlessly points to a spot in the crowd and she appears there a second later. 

They head backstage. Miriam peers out of the curtains and waves to someone in the front row before Diane gently pulls her back.

“It’ll be about ten minutes,” the emcee says to her. “Can I get you anything before we start?”

Diane considers for a moment and then smiles. “Do you have any coffee?”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
